Dear Anna
by Sanction
Summary: "I would steal a kiss from you now, if I could." Two letters from the lost days.
1. Dear Anna

_Dear Anna,_

 _It's strange to finally be writing to you after all this time. But there's really no one else for me to speak with, no one else I want to reach out to. It's taken the end of the world for me to realize that the only person I want to spend the end of the world with is you._

 _And yet it seems I can't do even that. For all I know, you may no longer even be alive. Even as I wrote those words, I could barely see them through my tears. I've hoped for a long time that you'd be safe in New York City, but I see now that the chances of that are pretty much non-existent. No place is safe._

 _Because whatever it is that fucked technology over, it did it on a planetary scale. No electricity, no radio, no cell phones. No heat. Cities going dark, planes falling from the sky. It looks like mankind's finally come to Death's door, and we're going down with a whimper._

 _And that's fine. That's completely fine, Anna. You see, soon I'll be ending it all myself._

 _Today marks the 108th day since I left you in New York and my plane crashed into the Canadian wilderness. Each day since has been a battle to see the next one. This place has no mercy: it'll kill you with fangs and icy winds if it can. It kills all will and hope. It makes you into a killer._

 _It's taken me this long and this far to realize that no matter how much food I scrounge or how many knives and arrows I make, I will die here. I look at the barren rose hip bush outside my door and realize it. Everything dies here. I will be gone long before anyone thinks to search this place. I don't know how it will come but it will come. Infection, a bad fall, poisoned meat, a wolf in the dark._

 _Even as I sit here in bed, I can hear a snowstorm howling hungrily outside my door._

 _Oh, Anna._

 _I regret ever leaving you. I regret the angry words I said, I regret making you cry. I regret thinking that you were ever ashamed of me. I hate that instead of mending what I damaged, I ran as fast and as far as I could from you._

 _I hate that I don't remember ever telling you that I love you._

 _Did I really think I could escape you? Well, that was stupid of me. Here in this empty dark where I have to steal everything to survive, I think of you every spare moment I find. At night when I lie in bed or on the forest floor, I imagine tangling my fingers in your red-gold hair. I remember the way you brushed your cheek against mine when we first danced. I remember the way you sat at the window to read, and how you liked to light scented candles when we bathed. I remember the afternoon we spent, drunk in a boat in Central Park, warmed by wine and stolen kisses. I'd steal a kiss from you now if I could._

 _I never did talk much about my family, did I? My old man was a soldier-fought in Iraq. He told me once that the thing he wanted most was to find a place of poetry where he could die. For years I thought he was nothing but a morbid old drunk. But now with my end in sight, I realize what he meant and how precious that choice is. I want to end my life in a place and in a way that has meaning._

 _I think I've got it, Anna._

 _It's an island off the coast by the highway, within sight of a fishing village. It's a ways off from civilization—like me. You have to work a bit to get to it—also like me. But once you get here, you'll never want to leave. It has trees like castle towers, and rabbits live and love and raise families among their roots. And it has a little cottage too, cozy as any fairytale's. I could imagine us living here, sheltered from the rest of the world. If it's true what the poets say, that love is isolation, then this island is love._

 _I know how I will end, Anna. Not by a bullet to the head or by jumping off a mountaintop, however quick and painless. I don't want to die in battle against a wolf or a bear. I'm no Viking and I'm not my father._

 _Tonight I'll step outside the cottage and light my last fire, have my last meal. I'll sit on the snow and take off my wolf-skin coat and my deer-skin boots. I'll watch the moonrise on the frozen sea. And then I'll go to sleep._

 _I'll die here inside the walls of winter. But I'll die dreaming._

 _I'll dream that spring will come for me one day. And it will find me sitting here waiting. I'll dream that you'll come with that first warm morning, and when I open my eyes I'll find you standing before me again._

 _Maybe someday someone will find this letter, and if I'm lucky they'll find you too and give this to you. Maybe then you'll know what I've always held in my heart._

 _But if that never happens, Anna, I hope to find you myself somewhere beyond the dark, so I can kiss you once more._

 _Until then, I will sleep and dream of spring._

 _Your,_

 _Serah_


	2. Dear Serah

_Dear Serah,_

 _I know there's a chance that you may never read this, but I want to try anyway. This must be my first hand-written letter in years. But it figures that if there's anyone I would write a letter to at the end of the world, it would be you._

 _Hello._

 _I've been counting. It's been exactly 1 month, 8 days and 11 hours since I last heard your voice, or felt your kiss, or held you in my arms. I keep thinking back to the day you left and I wish to God I found the courage to keep you from walking out of my apartment and into thin air. Then we'd be here, warm and together by this campfire, rather than me alone and aching to feel your lips on mine._

 _Wow, you'd never let me get away with writing something that mushy, but I suppose the Apocalypse tends to make a girl honest._

 _It really does seem like the end times now, doesn't it? This endless winter, this snow in August. No more trains or cars or cell phones. Just the skeletons of cities and the bitter, bitter cold. It's like someone had unmoored the world from orbit and we're just floating off into the void._

 _Those first few days in New York City, well, those were the bad days. First came the looting and the riots. Then the fires. And each night I would jerk awake to the sound of gunshots. I knew, like most everyone then, that if I stayed in the city, I would die._

 _That first week, I packed every essential thing I could find and fled north with six other survivors. We walked right out of the state, gathering as many people who would follow. We walked with no earthly idea where to go, walked until the urban areas turned suburban, then to sprawl, then to wilderness. Straight into Canada, only stopping when we had run out of road._

 _When we found the huskies, they were trapped and starving in their kennels, their owner nowhere to be found. Half our group wanted to eat them. But I said no._ Hell _no_.

 _I fought tooth and nail to keep them. I argued they were sled dogs and that they could help us stay alive during the long winter. But mostly, I fought to keep them because you loved dogs so much and would have done the same._

 _And so, here I am, leading a dog sled team. Can you believe it? I got the job mainly because the huskies all like me—go ahead and make your jokes about my being such a den mother. Together, we'd race through the frost like superheroes, scavenging for supplies and trading with other encampments._

 _They're my life now, these dogs. Without them, my village would freeze or starve to death. They're family to me, just like the rest of the people here._

 _It's strange to have so many rely on me. I never believed you when you said I had a knack for bringing people together. But it helps to imagine that you can see me. I like to think I make you proud._

 _God, I wish you were here._

 _I can't stop imagining you living with me, surrounded by warm fires and friendly faces, a dog or two lounging at our feet. I dream of it every day, Serah._

 _You were never good with words, but the truth is you never needed to be. A look, a touch, the way you made excuses to bump into me or to hold my hands. Your kiss that my toes quiver and my tongue taste like sugar. You showed me that you loved me in a million silent ways._

 _I should have honored that love. I should have treasured it. If I had only known what my hesitation would cost me, I'd have gone to my parents and told them about us. Instead, I just sat there like a cowed puppy as you walked out my door. I have never forgotten how much of a weakling I was._

 _But I'm not a weakling anymore, Serah. Our time together has given me an inch of your backbone. Just an inch, but every day I use that inch to get out of bed and work my ass off for one more tomorrow._

 _It's a tomorrow I want to share with you. Which is why, in a week's time, I'm leaving the village._

 _My dogs and I will be setting out for Great Bear Island, where you grew up. I'm guessing that's where you ran off to. It's a hell of a long way, but I have maps and weapons and supplies to last me a while. And the settlement has two other sled teams now, so I'm not worried for them._

 _I want to bring you here, Serah. I want my family to see you and know you and realize that I'm in love with the most beautiful girl in the world._

 _I'm leaving this letter here in the village, in the slim chance you might stumble your way here. If you do, stay. And please don't hijack one of the sleds to look for me. I promise I will come back._

 _We're all going to make it, Serah. I truly believe that. I believe that one day the world will turn and the snows will melt away and sun will shine on the green grass once more. And I will find you. I believe in our tomorrow._

 _And in case you didn't believe me the first time, let me say it again: I love you, Serah. And I'll make sure you'll never leave my arms again._

 _See you tomorrow._

 _Your,_

 _Anna_


End file.
